CONNECT - Co-ordination and stimulation of innovative ITS activities in Central and Eastern European Countries
Overview
Background & policy context:
CONNECT (Co-ordination and stimulation of innovative ITS activities in Central and Eastern European countries) is a co-operation between public authorities, road administrations and traffic information service providers. Partners from Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia are working together to improve cross-border traffic and transport through implementing harmonised and synchronised ITS applications on the high level road network in this area.
CONNECT amends the six existing TEMPO projects (ARTS, CENTRICO, CORVETTE, SERTI, STREETWISE and VIKING) to the Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries to ensure co-ordinated traffic management and control as well as high quality traveller information services on most important east-west road-corridors (including Pan-European corridors II, III, IV, V, VII and X) in an enlarged Europe. CONNECT started formally in May 2004 with its first phase focusing on studies, feasibility studies and first pilot projects/ demonstrations.
CONNECT focuses on the harmonised implementation of Distance Related Road Pricing (DRRP) systems, traffic information services and traffic control activities in the EU countries. The goal of CONNECT is to work out decision guidelines and concepts as a basis for harmonised system implementations in the CONNECT area.
Objectives:
The CONNECT objectives can be summarised according to the key objectives identified in the Multiannual Indicative Programme (MIP) 2001-2006 for TEN-T - Group 4 (CONNECT is not part of the MIP but its work programme is conform with the MIP projects): Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) in the road sector (TEMPO - Trans-European Intelligent Transport Systems Projects): “to stimulate a harmonised and synchronised deployment of ITS systems and services on the Trans-European Road Network (TERN) and to contribute to convergence between national/ regional planning and the overall implementation of the Information Society in the road transport field in Europe”.
CONNECT objectives are in detail:
- Integration of the new EU members in ongoing European initiatives
- Stimulation of the co-operation between the CONNECT partners and the existing projects of the TEMPO programme and related working groups (e.g. TMC Forum, DATEX2 Technical Committee)
- Fostering cross-border co-ordination of strategies, systems and services (e.g. Traffic Management Plans)
- Optimisation of the use of road capacity by implementing innovative cross-border ITS applications
- Stimulation of investments in (national) ITS infrastructure
- Improving the safety of road users
- Improving the efficiency of traffic flows and tackling congestions by harmonised cross-border traffic management and control strategies
- Reducing the travel time of road users by providing them with accurate, timely and relevant information as well as by providing cross-border services (e.g. RDS-TMC, web-based services)
- Fostering urban/ interurban interfaces to ensure fluent traffic flows between the high level and the connecting road network
- Launching projects to foster the ‘interconnect ability’ of transport modes to achieve inter-/multimodal door-to-door services
- Improving of interoperability between national EFC systems at least to achieve basic pre-conditions for interoperable road user charging
- Harmonisation of national system architectures to avoid new borders between the CONNECT member states as result of non-interoperable national telematics systems
Methodology:
Focus on:
- Traffic Information Services
- Traffic Management Services
- Freight and logistics services
- Efficiency of ICT Infrastructure
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